The credit crunch is far from pushing British charitable giving into freefall, despite the assertion in your leader column that "there can no longer be any doubt that all sorts of good causes will soon be feeling the squeeze" (Give and take, 6 January).

Our centre was set up to provide robust evidence-based information about a topic that is still often mainly understood through anecdote and media hype. Indeed, over the Christmas break we fielded phone calls from numerous journalists asking for hard-luck stories of charities suffering from recession-hit donors reneging on their pledges. But evidence of any collapse in donations remains thin, and there are signs that the philanthropic impulse remains robust. The NCVO/CAF Individual Giving survey estimates that the British public donated £10.6bn in 2007-08, up 8% on the previous year; last autumn's BBC Children in Need appeal raised its highest-ever total of £21m in one day; and newly published accounts show increases in corporate charitable activities in 2008.

Your article focuses on a handful of well-known philanthropists, such as Sir Tom Hunter, Warren Buffett and George Soros; but research shows that the majority of people make regular charitable donations, so it is misleading to refer only to celebrity donors whose style and scale of giving are hardly typical. Furthermore, private donations constitute just one-third of total charity funding: other sources include legacies, government grants and contracts, trading and investment income. Many charities have sensibly structured their finances to avoid over-reliance on any one type of income.

Your deterministic view that "now incomes are slumping, there is every reason to expect giving, too, will start falling off" is belied by research which shows that people do not only give away wealth because they can afford to (if that were true then every rich person would be a philanthropist), but rather because they choose to use their resources to pursue what they believe is important.

Donors may have less money to spend, but all spending decisions are questions of priorities and they may not automatically tighten their altruistic belts first. Charities can help themselves by demonstrating that contributions are both needed and having a measurable impact. Lapsed donors rarely claim they couldn't afford to carry on giving, but they often say they lost faith in the effectiveness of their giving.

The focus for public policy, charity and donor planning should be around targeted help where the hit is immediate, with longer-term strategies to ensure that donors understand the importance of their gifts.

Reports of dramatic falls in charitable giving are overblown and potentially self-fulfilling. People are able to make careful decisions about where their money is best spent, and fatalistic claims may only serve to undermine confidence and deepen any recessionary impact on giving - just at a time when charities' services are particularly needed.